9/7/13

Midnight Madness Changed Eli Roth's Life!

I was an unknown filmmaker with an unfinished film, borrowing money from
my parents to pay my $700-a-month rent for a studio apartment on
Beachwood Drive. Cabin Fever was not finished, and we needed
another $400,000 to mix and make prints. I had submitted the movie to
the Toronto Film Festival, and we were told it was rejected. But then
something happened where a guy named Colin Geddes (the
Midnight Madness programmer) got hold of the tape (yes, the VHS tape of
my AVID edit) and played it. Apparently the main festival had rejected
the film, but someone said, "This seems more like Colin's thing." Colin
loved the film and put us in the festival -- dead last. We were so
dead-last that the closing-night party was scheduled to end before our
film began.